Lavender - Last One of the Year

I just had to make a Lavender soap if only for the Grandmothers.  I don't dislike Lavender, but it's not a great personal favorite, but I know that many people really love it.  That includes the family's grandmothers.

I continued with a similar recipe to the ones I had already made, determined to use both Lanolin and Jojoba, but this time I also remembered the Cocoa Butter that is sitting on a shelf in kitchen.  Since I don't have steady supply of lard, I thought it would be a great addition to the recipe to make the soap harder.  I also had some Shea butter that I added to it.  One of the grandmothers loves that.

For colour I turned to the Alkanet infused oil that I have, lovely and dark red, ready to give it's blue to purple colour as soon as it comes in touch with the alkaline caustic soda. I never tire of the colour magic that soap making is.

I made these big generous chunks of soaps and the recipe turned out to be:

Olive Oil - 40% - 7oz / 200g (80g of that was Alkanet infused)
Coconut Oil - 30% - 5.3oz / 150g
Cocoa Butter - 10% - 1.8oz / 50g
Shea Butter - 10% 1.8oz / 50g
Sunflower Oil - 5% - 0.9ox / 25g
Lanolin - 2.5% - 0.45oz / 12.5g
Jojoba Oil - 2.5% - 0.45oz / 12.5g

I used water with a teaspoon of sugar.  And to continue the theme I decorated with Achillea flowers, Lavender flowers and Birch leaves.

The grandmothers got their soaps for Christmas. One of them remarked that the saves hers for special occasions and was just running out.  It pleased me that she would get a new one.  But this year, rather than give soaps as presents for christmas, I had people choose some to take with them when they left the Christmas dinner.  I still have enough left for me and plenty of soaps begging to be created in the New Year, among them a Vanilla soap and there is is definitely a Yellow one on the horizon.

Happy New Year and very best thanks for the one about to pass.

The Cream of the Crop

I had a vision of the lightest creamiest soap since I knew I had some whipping cream in the freezer. I had put it there a long time ago, anticipating a soap making session in a distant future.  When making milk soaps one needs the milk/cream/yoghurt to be frozen, so when I had some cream that I didn't need, I threw it in the freezer knowing that one day I would be grateful for my foresight.

I decided that it would smell soft and gentle.  The inspiration was a soap that I made some time ago, but that was unscented and now I had vanilla in mind.  Since vanilla makes soap brown I couldn't use that. Bensoin resin is a favorite of mine and an acceptable substitute because it is quite a sweet scent.  I also thought of Ylang Ylang.

I have used Titanium Dioxide in my milk soaps before, but decided to do without that this time and take my chances with the colour.  I was careful to mix just a little bit of the Caustic Soda with the frozen cream, using a quarter at a time, and throwing the whole thing into the freezer in-between.  As expected the whole thing turned a strong yellow colour and that made me reach for the dried yellow rose petals to use for decoration.
This was a pretty complicated mixture of oils and waxes. I'm still intrigued by lanolin in soap and wanted to test that better.  I also really like to have some castor oil so that it doubles as a shampoo bar.  And the Jojoba... Well, I had some.

Olive Oil            40% - 7oz / 200 g.
Coconut Oil       35% - 6.2oz / 175 g.
Cocoa Butter     10% - 1.8oz / 50 g.
Sunflower Oil    10% - 1.8oz / 50 g.
Jojoba Oil            2% - 0.35oz / 10 g.
Castor Oil            2% -  0.35oz / 10 g.
Lanolin                1% - 0.18oz / 5 g.

Water  5.8oz / 200 g.
Caustic soda 2.4oz / 68 g.
10% superfat

I mixed Bensoin, Neroli and Ylang Ylang with a little bit of Sweet Orange and Sandalwood Amyris. Decorated with yellow Rose petals, Chamomile, Achilla and Birch leaves.  The soap started to seize pretty quickly so I jammed it into the mold and then I put it in the freezer to prevent it from overheating.  I smells wonderful.  It doesn't look as good, some strange thing going on in the middle, but I look forward to testing.  This one will probably also only be for me.

This One's Just for Me

I made this very strange recipe.  I have no idea how it will turn out at all.  I knew I wanted to use lard.  I don't use palm oil mostly because I can't find it here and lard makes for very good hard soaps.

I also wanted to use up some oils that I had a little bit left of. Additonally I wanted to make soap just for myself.   Something luxurious and pretty.   A soap that I would use on my face, and therefore I wanted all those exotic oils that I normally would use in face creams rather than soap.

So it became quite a cocktail.  I'm still waiting to see how it will turn out.  It just might be an almighty flop.  But it could also become my new favorite soap.

I know this is a crazy recipe. It's not supposed to be very conditioning, but since I used both jojoba oil and lanolin, both of which really are waxes rather that oils, I'm counting on them to do the job. Plus this is more superfatted than I usually do.

The thought with this soap (if there was any, I did this pretty instinctively) was to make something similar to my old facial soap that I did ages ago. That soap seemed to take forever to cure, but turned out to be one of my all time favorite soaps. And that one aged quite well too.

Coconut Oil - 36% - 5 oz / 160 g
Lard - 30% - 4.7 oz / 134g
Almond Oil - 17% - 2.6oz / 73g
Avocado Oil - 10% - 1.6oz - 45g
Olive oil (Rubarb root infused) - 3.5% - 0.5oz / 15g
Castor Oil - 1.8% - 0.3oz / 8g
Jojoba Oil - 1.6%% - 0.25oz / 7g
Lanoline - 0.5% - 0.1oz / 2g

Water - 5.2oz / 66g

Lye - 2oz / 58g which makes it 15% super fatted, but always check a lye calculator (I always use Soapcalc myself).

For fragrance I used Neroli, Ylang Ylang and Benzoin, with a dash of Rosewood, Sweet Orange and a dash of Geranium, Vetiver, Sandalwood Amyris and Cubea Litsea.   I put it in this silicone cake form that I got in a thrift store (and have never used for cake) as well as my heart shaped ice cube mold from Ikea.   I like to have small soaps for the bathrooms.

The scent is nice and fresh and the colour also turned out to be a very nicely pink.   But this soap is also going to take a lot of curing.   Oh, well. Patience is the mother of all virtues, as they say.   I need more of that, and as they also say: Practice makes perfect.  So it's all good.

Update: Like I expected, this soap took some time to cure, but once it did it does make for a nice very creamy lathered soap that feels quite gentle on my skin.  I have also used it as a shampoo bar and my hair likes it.  The fragrance didn't hold up as well as I hoped.  It turned into a kind of indistinct something.  So even if I like that Neroli, Ylang Ylang and Benzoin combination I should probably have skipped the others or made one of them dominant.

Making Soap My Way - A Tutorial Of Sorts

I made soap again.  Just suddenly got the urge and then I thought I should document my process.  I never did a tutorial before.  Mostly because when I started this blog I was a complete beginner in soap making and I was reading other peoples tutorial to learn from them, not ready to teach others.  But now that I have become pretty seasoned in soap making, I thought I should write down my steps.

I have always made soap in the kitchen using my regular pots and kitchen stuff.  I have read a lot of books about making soaps and most of them are very good and thorough, but sometimes I feel that they make it sound so difficult and complicated.  I like things to be easy and simple.  So my favorite book about making soap is by Anne Watson "Smart Soapmaking" (even if the subtitle is a bit more complicated: "The simple guide to Making Traditional Handmade Soap Quickly, Safely, and Reliably, or How to Make Luxurious Handcrafted Soaps for Family, Friends, and Yourself".  I love the humor in that).  She gave me the courage to go ahead and try it.

Over time I have developed my own way to do things and I have gotten pretty set in my ways.  I always use the same equipment: same pot, same glass measuring jugs, same spoons, same everything.   Except the recipes.  I just can't make the same recipes again and again.  I always need to tweak them a little bit, at least.  And now suddenly, I have a need to make soaps.  There are a few that are asking to be made.  I have sometimes wondered what kind of soap I would make first.  Once I started again.  It was Rhubarb oil soap.  A very strange recipe, if I'm honest.  I have no idea how it will turn out.  Might be a total failure, although I thought of it as a luxurious face soap.  But that is another post.  This one is about the process.

My equipment consists of:

• A pot - I use that for the water/liquid and to dissolve the caustic soda
• A large pyrex class measuring jug with a handle - That is for the oils
• A small pyrex class measuring jug with a handle - This one is for the caustic soda
• ---I do not use the measuring jugs to measure, just as containers---
• A slotted spoon - to stir the caustic soda solution
• Two thermometers - one for the soda and one for the oils
• A digital scale - to measure everything
• A stick blender - to mix everything
• Moulds
• And the most important equipment of all is my computer... and SoapCalc www.soapcalc.net/.  I use that for every single recipe and save them as pdf.  
• And then there is the camera, or the phone these days.  (Which I know isn't good because the photos are not nearly as good as on a proper camera.  But I have gotten a bit lazy.  I need to change that.)

I put my recipes straight into SoapCalc as I work.  I usually make either 500g or 700g depending on which mould I'm using.  I put in the total weight and my preferred water ratio (usually about 33% these days) and super fat % (varies from 5-10% usually).  I would recommend that beginners stick to the default setting in the beginning.

I would also recommend goggles and gloves and an apron.  Lye is very caustic and it does burn.  The raw soap is also very caustic and it does burn.  You do not want to splash this stuff on yourself and definitely not get it into your eyes.  Having said that, I have to admit that the hazmat-like outfit that I wore in the beginning has given way to a bit lighter safety gear.

Before I do anything else I get my mould ready.  I like the wooden moulds with freezer paper. But one can use silicone moulds (for baking) and just about anything that has a shape resembling soap.  In the beginning I used milk cartons and yoghurt pots.
Then I start measuring the oils one by one, resetting the scale after each time. Sometimes I pour a little bit more than I intended and then I go back to SoapCalc and adjust accordingly. I melt the oils in the microwave.  About a minute at a time and I stir in-between.
Next I measure the caustic soda. I prefer not to store it among the foodstuff in the kitchen so I keep it in the garage. I take the small pyrex jug and the scale and measure out there and bring it back to the kitchen.
I then measure out the liquid into the pot.  I usually just put the pot on the scale and pour in whatever liquid I'm using. Then I put the pot on the stove and turn the exhaust on full while I slowly pour the caustic soda into the liquid. The liquid gets very hot so I let it sit and cool down. If I need to hasten the cooling I'll simply let some cold water run on the outside of the stainless steel pot.  That cools it pretty quickly.
Once everything is the same temperature I pour the liquid into the oils. I try not to heat the oils too much and often leave a little bit of the solid oils to melt on their own while the oils cool down to the correct soaping temperature.  Or even have some solid bits still floating like here.  The stick blender takes care of it. I prefer to soap at about 40°C / 100°F, so I let both oils and water cool to around that temperature.
Here is why I love to make soaps.  The Rhubarb oil is yellow with a strange greenish, almost iridescent cast to it.  But once the lye hits it, it turns red. I love that. I use an old Bamix stick blender that I got in a thrift shop.  I really like it.  It's very sold and rather quiet.
Next is the fun bit: Turn on the stick blender and watch the swirls.
I don't really mix for very long.  I'm not too bothered about trace.  The soap mixture will reach trace on it's own if it is properly blended.  At least I have never had any problems with that.
I then pour in my essential oils, which I have already poured into a small bowl.  I do not have a scale that is sensitive enough to measure essential oil blends. Since my recipes are small, I may use only a few drops of this and a dash of that.  My scale can measure down to +/- 2 g (that's around 0.07 oz) and that isn't enough accuracy to use it for fragrance.  So I just make my fragrance blends on instinct. I usually try to avoid using the stick blender too much for the essential oils, since they are so volatile.
Once all the ingredients are blended, I pour the soap into moulds.  I have wooden log moulds and I like those. I'm usually not concerned if they gel or not.  I just let it happen. But, if I do not want them to gel I'll put the moulds into the fridge or even freezer overnight. Or sometimes I use smaller mould to avoid gelling, but that doesn't always work.

I always use a small pin (knitting needle, the end of a thermometer or a chopstick) to make swirls in my soaps to decorate the tops.  I studied the way other peoples soaps look like and I tried to get different looks.  But mine always looked the same.  The funny thing is that when my cousin and I were doing this together and she would use the same implement and the same type of movement we could easily tell our soaps apart.  So I guess this is my look.

I added dried flowers.  That may be too cutesy for some, but when I was looking through my old photos as I uploaded them to Flickr I really loved the look of them.  So even if they get spoiled when they get wet I still like them like that.

Lichen: Parmelia saxatilis - Obsession nr. 4

Parmelia is the lichen that has most commonly been used here in Iceland to dye.  It gives rather nice yellows and browns and even over to reddish browns.  And it leaves it's wonderful scent in the wool.  As with other lichen, heat will make the colours more brown so dying cold is actually quite smart.  There are three varieties of Parmelia that grow here and all are used to dye wool.  They all look very similiar, but P. omphalodes is slightly more brown in colour than the others. P. sulcata has a wrinkly kind of surface.  I think the one that I collected is P. saxatilis which is known as Shield lichen or Crottle in English.  Crottle was also commonly used in Scotland to dye wool.

I came across this lichen by accident.  Even if it is quite common here, I hadn't quite figured out where to go to look for it.  But my husband and I were taking my mother in law for a drive to see a place where we sometimes take the dogs for a walk.  It's a lovely place, only minutes from the city and there is this river and a few small summer cottages and there is also some lava rock that is covered in moss and also Parmelia saxatilis.  I sat on the rocks and as I touched the rock to steady myself I felt that it wasn't actually a rock, but a lichen.  It looks just like rock.  That is so cool!  I am always so grateful for these little gifts from nature and in that spirit of gratefulness I gathered a little bit.  Just enough to cover my palm really.  Because there wasn't that much of it in that place.  I'm not dyeing large quantities, only about 20-25 grams of wool at a time (there are about 30 g to an oz).  I'm just curious about what colours I can get and I want to document that.

There isn't that much written about lichen dyeing compared to dying with plants, but what there is in Icelandic is about Parmelia.  There isn't usually any difference made between the different Parmelias in dyeing literature, but I'm interested in the subtle differences.  But the problem lies in identifying them correctly.  I may have to look to one of my father collegues for help one day because I just may be wrong about the particular variety.

I did the same with this lichen as I do with all the others.  I first simmer it in water and coloured some wool.  That gave me a mustard kind of yellow.  It's very nice even if I'm not a fan of the curry yellows.  There just simply doesn't seem to be a lichen colour that I don't like.

Then I tried to steep it in ammonia, but that didn't really do anything special.  At least not yet.  It's still sitting there and I'm still shaking it.  This can go on for weeks.  Up to 16 weeks I've read, so patience is needed.  But, I'm not expecting purple from this one.  It would be more of a maroon, or in the best case a burgundy colour.  But we'll just have to wait and see.

I had rather high hopes for this in a soap.  It somehow seems logical that a light yellow liquid will give much less colour than an orange one will.  But...  You'll have to wait for the next post.  There was a bit of a mix up and I couldn't find my notes, so this soap you may have seen before in my Peltigera post.   That was wrong.  This soap, the one that I decorated with Gallium verum, is made with Parmelia water, not Peltigera as I thought.  And it only produced a slight blush of a colour.  And no mustard tone to the soap.  It really amazes me how unrelated the yarn and soap colours are.  I would have thought that there would be more of a correlation between the two.  Because even if I have been using the exhaust baths to colour the soaps, there has been quite a bit of colour left in the water.  But I'm sure I'll have to try the lichen decoctions fresh in soaps one of these days.  For now this is just experimentation for fun.  And I have a lot of soaps that smell of Vetiver and something.  Oh, yes this one does have Orange Essential oil and Vetiver.  At least I got that right.

Lichen: Ochrolechia or Pertusaria - Obsession nr. 3

The lichens that I have already posted about, have been foliose, but now it's time for a crustose lichen.  Those are the ones that are like stains on rocks.  This type is quite abundant on rocks in the wood where I walk the dogs.

I am not sure if it's an Ochrolechia or a Pertusaria.  It is probably either lactea or corallina.  The former is a creamy or gray colour and has a pimply surface and can grow to about 15 cm, the latter is very white and without the bumps and gets even bigger, to 20 cm.  I'm not the only one who is confused, P. lactea is sometimes also called Ochrolechia lactea, so if biologists are confused...

But anyway I'm pretty sure that both O. (or P.) lactea and O. (or P.) corallina both grow on the rocks because there definitely are lichens that are more white and others that are more gray or cream.  I collected tiny amounts of the cream or gray ones and still have the white ones to explore.  Oh, there is so much to do and so little time!  But, on the bright side, I have something to look forward to.

It is pretty amazing that a colourless body of a crusty something can produce colour, but it can.  This lichen gave me the most beautiful sunny yellow on wool when simmered.  I first dyed a small amount of Icelandic wool and as it is very white I got this beautiful yellow.  The Alpaca wool that I'm using for the lichen dyes now are much darker in colour, so that the colours are more muted.

After I had used the lichen to dye in water I put the same lichen into an ammonia solution and it turned a kind of red colour with a hint of brown to it.  I shook the jar every day faithfully for over 3 months, sometimes thinking it was on the verge of turning purple, but I gave up in the end and dyed with it.

It is a lovely earthy pink.  I also dyed another skein in the exhaust bath, which gave a lighter shade.  I was very happy with that and expected great things from it in a soap.  But of course you never get what you expect in this natural colour business.

In preparation for the glorious pink I expected I scented the soap with Geranium as well as the Vetiver and put some hibiscus on top.  But the colour never showed up.  Just a slight blush of a tint in spite of the strongly coloured water.

It is so amazing to me that it is possible to get two such different colours from the same material.  How can one not be fascinated by these unpredictable things?

Heavenly duo - Vanilla and Neroli

I love vanilla scent and I have used up all my vanilla soap so I had to make another one.  This time I thought I should combine it with some flowery scent (Neroli is my favorite) because Vanilla can be a tad too sweet on it's own.

For those lovely scents I thought I should try Madder root again.  I have used it a few times and of course the challenge with Madder is to get the blueish red dyes to appear.  Apparently Madder has five different dyes ranging from yellow through warm red and brown to blueish red.  The dyes are sensitive to PH, blue reds appearing in an alkaline environment and the warm reds in acidic solutions.

Since Madder root is water soluble I decided to give it a long time in the caustic soda to try to extract the maximum amount of dye.  I have read that one should rinse the root in cold water to wash away the more yellow dyes, so I did that.  I also decided that I would add it quickly to the lye solution while it was still quite hot to see what effect heat had on the Madder, hoping that it would extract more colour.  I let the madder sit overnight and soaped at room temperature.  When I combined the lye and the oils the Madder showed it's lovely blue reds, but very quickly turned to peachy coral.  I think that colour is fashionable right now, so I didn't mind.  Madder seems to want to be warm coloured in soaps and that's the way it is.

The idea was to take a part of the Madder coloured soap and add Vanilla to it and that part would turn brown and cover the Madder colour.  I had also planned to attempt a fancy swirl, and use a cardboard separator in the middle and all.

The reality was that I had started to make the soap without setting up the molds first and it took a while to line them and cut the cardboard and then the soap started to seize.  So much for my ambitious plans.  I used Neroli essential oil with a touch of Benzoin, ylang ylang and a small splash of Cubea Litsea.  I was a bit surprised since I was soaping at room temperature, but soaping is unpredictable and I think that is what makes it so fascinating for me.

But it smells devinely and I love the feel of it on my skin.  I used the last of my Almond oil, so I need to order some more.  It is really nice in soap.

The recipe I used this time is:

Coconut oil 25% 125g / 4.4oz
Olive oil 20% 100g / 3.5oz
Almond oil 20% 100g / 3.5oz
Rapeseed oil 20% 100g / 3.5oz
Cocoa butter 15% 75g / 2.6oz


Water 30% 150g / 5.3oz infused with dried and chopped madder root which is then strained
Lye 70g / 2.5oz

My fascination with natural colour has taken me a step further and I am now in the process of using plants to dye wool and a tiny bit of silk, just to see what colours I can get. I'm having loads fun and have learned a lot, some of which may be helpful in colouring soap. I have for example learned that when extracting dye from roots, heat will bring out more of the yellow tints.  So next time I used Madder I will use less heat and see if I can coax it to a slightly pinker shade.
...

I finally won!

The-ugliest-soap-anyone-ever-made-reward has got to be mine.  I made this soap sometime before Christmas and I had high hopes for it.  I thought it would be perfect as a gift to old people as a soap for a foot bath.  I had just gotten some Ginger essential oil and wanted to try it.  I had read that it's warming so I had this brilliant idea to combine it with the eggshells that I so ardently collected during the big bake fest.

When I used finely crushed eggshells in my Alkanet and lavender soap I liked it, but I like very scratchy.  I did however suggested that normal people could use it on their feet.  So I thought it a brilliant idea to do a special foot soap?  That time I had thought that the eggshells would sink to the bottom and form a layer at the bottom with a pumice kind of surface.  But they were pretty suspended throughout the body of the soap.  This time I sprinkled a layer on the bottom, thinking that the soap would soak in and automatically embed the eggshell in the bottom layer.  Well that didn't really work.  The result was a completely dry layer of eggshells that just sat on the bottom of my mold when I lifted the soap up.  What little managed to stick to the bottom of the soap was uneven and not pretty at all.  Fortunately, I had also put some eggshells in the main soap, so it wasn't a total disaster.  I still had a ton of exfoliating power in that soap.

I thought carefully about this recipe, but I can't find the recipe file.  But I wrote down the ingredients so I know it contains: Olive oil, Coconut oil, Soybean oil, Cocoa butter, Honey, Ginger EO and Peppermint EO and then the eggshells.  I think it might be 30% of the first three oils and then 10% Cocoa butter.  I used honey for it's lovely humectant qualities and it also gives a nice lather.  The eggshells need to be very finely crushed, or one can use poppy seeds.

I thought that since the colour was a sort of beige from the honey, it would look good with brown accents so I used cocoa powder for a line and sprinkled a bit of it on top with some brown sugar.
It looked fine in the mold.  But when I took it out to cut it it was horrendously ugly.  Not only was the bottom uneven and ugly, but the line looked dirty and the sugar on top just plain uninteresting.  I quickly shoved it out of the way so that no one would see it and puke.  And promptly forgot all about it.

Until today, I had cold feet, literally, so I went and found it and used it as foot soap.  I guess appearances aren't everything, because it works fine.  For feet.  Not for the body.  I tried it.  The eggshells are just a bit coarser than when I used them before (pounding them with a pestle in a mortar is a lot of work) and they did scratch my legs quite severely.   But that is very good for hard skin on the feet.  The scent of ginger with the peppermint is very nice, not too strong and maybe I should have used more.  Although I can't say that the soap alone made my feet feel warm, I'm sure it helped.  So all in all , not a bad soap.  But boy is it ugly.
...

Vanilla

The embroidery is a baby's duvet cover that my mother
made when she was expecting.  She says her mother made
her do it.  I'm glad because it is pretty.  The little bowl was
a gift from the artist and the tiny pearls are my sister in laws.
She makes very pretty necklaces and bracelets.

When I was little my mom always made vanilla ice cream for Christmas.  She made it in the ice cube tray without the inserts.  The tray was bog standard and not pretty at all,but she always used real vanilla corns.  That ice cream, naturally, had the holy taste of Christmas.  Just absolutely heavenly.  Homemade vanilla ice cream just can not be topped.  I have always hated to throw the used pods.  I just knew there was a use for them even if I hadn't thought of it.  Of course there is lots that can be done with it.  In powdered sugar it becomes vanilla sugar that is used in cake recipes and in alcohol it turns into vanilla essence.  I am now furiously trying to find excuses to buy vanilla so I can make something nice from them.  I also have this wonderful oil that I put cut up used vanilla pods into and now it is a lovely smelling oil that I rub on as a body oil.

I love the sweet and warm scent so I have been wanting to make Vanilla soap for ages and finally went ahead.  I wasn't quite the succcess I hoped, but it does smell lovely.  I had this vanilla in glycerin and it was dark brown.  I figured it would make a very dark soap so I thought I'd try to see how my white soap gratings would turn out in a dark brown base.  I also wanted to experiment with a cocoa line which I think Tiggy at FuturePrimitive  was the first one, at least she does it expertly. So the plan was to have a darker bottom with a cocoa line and then above that a white line!  How cool.  And on top  of the I would have a lighter layer of soap with the white soap shavings and I would have a bit of white soap for decoration.  I wanted to see what finely grated soap shavings would look like in a soap.  I wasn't thrilled that my Confetti soap resembled Spam just a tad too much.

I love the way those dollops almost look like flowers.

Well, that was the plan.  I thought that by using powdered sugar I could get an white line!  I should have known better, of course the sugar just melts.  Why I didn't try TD I don't' know.  But anyway the result was a soap that falls apart.  But I wiped away the sugary mess and pressed the two halves together and they managed to stick together, at least long enough to be photographed.  But all was not lost.  I just used the bottoms to make scrolls and squirls to use as decoration later.  I have to say that I'm still disappointed (and always will be) that it's not possible to make a pure white Vanilla soap.  I guess it's the memory of the creamy white Christmas ice cream with the tiny little dots that tasted so good.  But the top on this soap is pretty, with the white blobs looking a bit like roses (I stirred them with a toothpick).  So I think I'm liking this one, even if it fell apart.

I am just about to try it out properly in the bath.  I did try the off cuts when it was fresh and it was promising.  But here is the recipe.

40% Olive oil
25% Coconut oil
15% Lard
15% Cocoa butter
5% Rape seed oil

Water 33%
5% superfat

I used Vanilla with just a touch of Palmarose, Rosewood and Ylang Ylang to take away the cloying sweetness that pure vanilla can have.  I also used both sugar and silk in the lye solution and that should make for a good and silky lather.

So I'm off to have a nice long soap in tub.  The weather is miserable, rainy and feels even colder than when it snows.  So the warm and comforting scent of the vanilla is going to be lovely and I'll finish with a my precious vanilla oil and dream of spring.  At least the snow is melting.
.

Parsley for the fresh green of spring.

The clay plaque is by my little one and it hangs in the
kitchen. I completely fell for the measuring cups I saw
in the MOMA store, especially the colours. I like green.

My body is screaming for spring but unfortunately it is a long way off.  The true season to start to be in the garden isn't really till late May up here in the north.  But I have started to plan my vegetable allotment garden and this weekend I will sow the first plant.  I have been making pots from newspaper.  I did that last year as well and it worked pretty well.  I have to admit that I also just like the way it looks all green, sustainable and kinda cool.

I finally made my green soap.  I have been meaning to use Parsley for ages.  The reason is that Parsley has a lot of Chlorophyll and therefore it should give a good green colour.  Chlorophyll, of course, is what makes Parsley such a good breath freshener after eating garlic.  It's also a great antiseptic, by the way, as well as chock full of vitamins and minerals.  Apparently chlorophyl is available as a colouring substance, but I haven't seen it anywhere myself.  I just dried some parsley that I've had growing in a pot.  I use it in cooking too, not just as garnish, I like it and actually eat it.  Dried Parsley is not oil soluble.  I tried to put some fresh Parsley into oil and even used a stick blender to try to disperse it into the oil.  That did not work at all.  So this I time I crumbled dried Parsley and used 2 tsp which I blended with the EO's into a recipe of 500 g. (about a pound) of oil.  I could have made tea and probably should have, but I wanted to have a part of the soap without colour to play with it.  I'm getting a bit bored with one colour soaps.  But the white part got pretty stiff so I ended up with white lumps in the soap rather than swirls of any kind.  Oh, well!

The recipe I used is a little bit different than last time, but that is only because I ran out of some ingredients.

36% Olive oil
30% Coconut oil
25% Rape seed oil
5% Castor oil
4% Cocoa butter

Water 33%
5% superfat.

I  used a combination of Rosemary, Peppermint and Ginger essential oils for fragrance and the result is a fresh and green scent that almost clears the sinuses.

The soap is very, very soft.  I cut it after a week, but that was difficult.  I don't know if that is the rapeseed oil or not.  I probably should only use 15% of that.  It produces soft soap.  But the colour is still a pretty green although it doesn't really look very green in the photo.  But I have a feeling that it may turn to olive with time.  I'll add that info to this post at a later stage.

Confetti soap with Rape seed oil

The tiered cake stand is a part of our dinner service and gets
a lot of use. I pile cookies and candy on it at Christmas
and at other times it may store ginger, lemons or whatever.

I had planned to do this soap before New Years day.  I thought it would be so appropriate for the occasion, but I didn't do much soaping during the holidays.  Being the cheepskate... strike that... thrifty, the way I am, I have been saving my off cuts and putting them in a small bowl.  It was starting to look really pretty with all the colours, so I could just see how it would make a lovely looking soap.  It didn't quite turn out the way I wanted, but now I know what I should have done differently.  And that is what it's all about, isn't it?

There is nothing wrong with the soap of course, but I had envisioned it white with smaller speckles of colour.  So why exactly I used Orris root, lemongrass EO and large bits is beyond me!  Except of course I had just gotten the Orris root and had to try it, I hadn't really thought about the colours of the EO's until I poured them and I thought that if I used a grater it would get too small so I chopped it into pieces.  But I like the scent and I used lots of it.  Maybe too much, but that was an accident.

This is also the first soap that I do with Rape seed (Canola) oil.  I have always had this thing about it.  I mean, it's used as a motor oil and up till recently it wasn't edible.  I will still absolutely not use it as food although I might consider it's use as biodiesel.

I am rather pleased with the decoration.  I have gotten these curled bits of soap when trimming and then when I saw what pretty decorations some people used them for I decided to make them especially for decoration.  That was not successful and now I have no idea how I accidentally got the few that I had.  Life is just really strange that way sometimes.

The recipe I used (The soap was 5% superfatted):

30% Coconut oil
30% Olive oil
25% Rape seed oil
10% Cocoa butter
5% Castor oil

I used some sugar in the water which was 30% of the oils.  Maybe a little too much discount on the water, the soap was very quick to trace after I put the EO's in.

The soap bits are ends of soaps that have been coloured with Rumex oil (the pink), Annato (yellow) and Alkanet (lavender).  I used 1 tsp of Titanium dioxide to get the background a bit lighter.  The scent was a blend of Lavender, Rosewood, Lemongras and Ylang Ylang and I used 1 tsp of the Orris root powder to see if the fragrance lasts better.

I did try the of cuts of this soap to see what it is like and I have to say that this recipe has a very creamy lather.  Don't know if that is the Rape seed oil, the sugar or just this combination.  I'll get a better feel for it when it has cured.  One thing that I feel that this soap could have benefitted from is a few scaps of green soap.  It would have made the decoration on top a little bit more flower like.  So that has to be my next soap.  A green trial using dried parsley.

.

Purple is (also) the colour of Christmas - Alkanet and lavender soap

The goblet is a favorite find that I got for less than a dollar.
The other mercury glass pieces are modern and not as nice,
but I felt it needed company. Mercury glass is called poor
mans silver in Danish. I think that is so neat.

The pretty purple or lavender colour that should come from Alkanet infused oil has eluded me until now.  I am very happy with this colour.  I used a lot of infused oil and I also used a decent amount of lavender, having recently received a large shipment of EO's.

I have had Alkanet root infusing in Olive oil for a few weeks now.  I figured it would be convenient to have it in a 1 liter bottle, ready to go when I feel like it.  I then just top it up since the Alkanet still has a lot of colour in it and keeps turning the oil a dark red.  I learned this from someone in fabric/yarn dyeing, just to give some credit to whose who deserve it.  I just can't remember exactly who to thank.

Lavender is a classic scent.  It's not one that is at the top of my list of favorites, but many people seem to like it a lot.  And "vive la différance".  I love the colour though.  The colour that the church uses for this time of the year is purple, so in a way it is a very Christmas-y colour and a very sophisticated one.  I have to admit that I stick to the traditional red, green, gold myself although I used to be more adventurous, way back in the olden days when I was hip and cool.

The recipe is similar to my recent ones, but with a little bit of soybean oil.  The oz are approximate and I did discount the water quite a bit.

Olive oil 40% 280g / 9.9oz   (out of this 75g/100g was Alkanet infused)
Coconut oil 25% 175g / 6.2oz
Lard 25% 175g / 6.2oz
Cocoa butter 5%  35g / 1.2oz
Soybean oil 5% 35g / 1.2oz

Water 30% 210g / 7.4 oz
Lye 99g / 3.5 oz

I did two batches, one with 75g and one with 100g of Alkanet oil.  I can't tell the difference between them.  I put Lavender EO in this and sprinkled some buds on top.  The soap turned a very pretty blue and seemed to stay that way for the longest time.  Then it started to turn lavender and a really nice one at that.  I'm very pleased.   I don't know if I can repeat that, but I'll be sure to brag about it if I do.

Now I need to stop making soap and start to bake the cookies for Christmas.  Eating cookies is necessary for me at Christmas, especially when reading the Christmas books.  I practically loose my ability to read if there are no cookies.  Books are a very common gift in Iceland and the bulk of all books that are published here come out in the month before Christmas.  We have plenty of time to read since our Christmas starts at six o'clock on the 24th and we then have two more day off.  The 24th is the main holiday.  It is when we light candles, all the church bells ring and we sit down to dinner in our finest clothes.  After dinner we open presents and there is always a book or two in there.  In addition I cheat a little bit and usually have a stash of my own that I have gathered just in case I don't get any for Christmas.

For this year I have 6 volumes of an old magazine, dating from 1907-1912.  I found them in a black plastic bag, sitting in the rain destined for the trash (what is wrong with people?).  I also have two books my husband gave me, one about medicinal herbs and one about dyeing with herbs.  I got hold of a book about kitchen cosmetics from the seventies and three volumes by Regine Deforge starting with "La bicyclette bleu", not in French though.  But now I think I'd better start baking those cookies.

Simple soap

That little enamel jar with a lid has holes in it, but someone
had put a sticky bandage on it.  I thought that was so sweet.

Simple soap is what got me started in the first place and here is one.  I wanted to do another milk soap and this time a soap that I could recommend for pregnant women and babies.  So no fragrance.  Kind of silly since I have been getting more fragrance and now have a lot.  But that is what I suddenly wanted to get back to.  A simple soap.  Very simple.

It is the kind of soap that I like to think my paternal grandmother would and could have made.  The ingredients would have been readily available to her even if they lived on an isolated farm in the north.  I like the thought that she made soap.  They had to be pretty self sufficient and it would fit with what I know of my grandfather who was very innovative in his farming.  In those days it was considered strange to have goats, pigs and ducks in addition to the traditional sheep and cattle.  But my grandfather was a very strong  character, intelligent and ambitious for himself and his family.  My grandmother... I wish I had known her.

I really think that it is such a shame that we don't get to know our grandparents when we ourselves finally reach an age where we start to be truly interested in our forefathers and mothers.  Or am I the only one?  Now I have so many questions!  I am fascinated by the past and how people lived then.  I know a little bit, but not the every day little things that interest me.

I love that photo of my dad and his mother and siblings.
She obviously sewed the dresses and probably the pants
as well. The sweaters of Icelandic wool were knitted
by her, but the kids probably knitted their own socks.

I never got the chance to know her.  She died ten years before I was born with her two youngest daughters.  She was thirty five and they were two and seven.  On December 12th 1948 an avalanche hit their farmhouse and buried it.  With my grandmother and her little daughters died also an old aunt, her daughter and the daughters son.  In all, six people died and one survived.  My grandfather was buried for four days in the snow.  The three older children were away at school.  My father was the oldest at fifteen, his brother one year younger and their sister was ten at the time.  The photo of the three of them with their mother is the only photo that exists of her.

So I made this soap to be simple and pure.  Something that she might even have made and passed the recipe on to me if things had turned out differently.
It is a small recipe, 500 g:

Olive oil        45% 225g / 7.9oz
Coconut oil   30% 150g / 5.3oz
Cocoa butter 10%   50g / 1.8oz
Sunflower oil 10% 50g / 1.8oz
Castor oil         5% 25g / 0.9oz

Milk 38% 190g / 5.3 oz  infused with M. maritime/chamomile
Lye 72g / 2.5 oz

I wanted to use some gentle herbs that won't harm a babies delicate skin so I put a few tablespoons of the Icelandic substitute for chamomile, Matricaria maritima in the milk and warmed it.  I then froze the milk and carefully put the lye in, a little at a time.   It turned a beautiful yellow colour.  I also added a bit of sugar water to the milk.  I like the way it increases bubbles.  I then put the soap into the freezer to prevent heating.  The result is a very softly coloured yellow soap that has no scent whatsoever.  There is a lovely simplicity in an unscented soap.  The absence of scent is the ultimate clean.  Pure like the country air and the bubbling trout river that runs through my grandparents land.

My father would have been 77 today had he lived.  He died on December 10th 2006.  I still think of him every day.

I like to remember them all at this time of the year.  I wish I had had the chance to know them.  But since that is not possible I like to give my thoughts to them around this time in an attempt to honor and celebrate their lives.  Not only my grandmother and her daughters, but also the little branch of the family that died with them.  My great aunt and her daughter and her brave nineteen year old grandson, who died after three days in the snow with the two year old in his arms.

December

This wonderful reindeer that I got from my colleagues. The
small candlesticks are so typically scandinavia. They
ended up in Afrika with some other stuff so our older
daughter she could get some Christmas spirit from home.

I love this time of year.   Or more specifically I really, really like December and Christmas time.  Not because I like cold weather.  On the contrary I dislike being cold intensely and am of the firm belief that being born here was a terrible misunderstanding in high places because I like sun and warmth and lush plants and animals running around and all that summer stuff.  So if it wasn't for Christmas I would wither away and die in the intense darkness that surrounds us at this time of the year.

December is a special month.  My birthday is today and my father had his birthday exactly one week later and a week after that it is my husband's birthday.  My husband and I had our first date in December and we always celebrate that much more than our wedding anniversary.  And then we have Christmas which is a three day holiday here and New Years is two.  And we always try to take the week between the two off if we possbly can to really get time to read and enjoy the holidays as much as we can.

I have one rule about Christmas preparation, to do only the things that I take pleasure in.  It used to be customary here to do a complete cleaning of everything before Christmas.  That included the closets and top of the kitchen cabinets and basically every nook and cranny.  I am blessed in that my mother wasn't much of a housewife and neither am I.  So this never made much sense to me.  When I was about twenty I had girlfriends who said that the scent of Ajax was necessary for them to get into the spirit of Christmas to which I replied that they should put some in a bowl, put it on the radiator, turn off the lights and light some candles.  Who is to see dirt in the dark of winter.  For those not in the know, Ajax is a particularly nasty smelling cleaning product.

I couldn't resist drying the leaves on the Japanese maple.
They were really bright red, but the colour didn't last.  I
used them anyway with the pretty larch cones I picked.

Like in many Nordic and European countries we start celebrating on the first Sunday of Advent which was last Sunday.  I always make an Advent wreath which has four candles that are lit on consecutive Sundays until Christmas when all four a are lit.  I think that tradition is German in origin.  I wasn't brought up with that, but started to make my own the first year I had my own home.  I always make a fresh one each year.  The look can vary, but this years is very simple.  I have learned one thing about making those and that is to get big and thick Church candles for my wreaths because they burn for a long time.  I have had two catch on fire, which probably isn't much for over thirty years.

This is always my first Christmas decoration.  Following that I put a green (fake) pine garland in the kitchen window and decorate it with lights and bits and bobs.  All sorts of strange stuff that has accumulated and doesn't fit anywhere else.  Some of it is my daughters handiwork from kindergarten, some is little gifts from people I care about, a lot of it is something that has been there for ever and I have no idea where I got it from.

I was going to write: But the point is..., but there really is not point to this post other than to get an excuse to sit down in our conservatory and watch the birds as they fly from one tree to another.   We have pond in the garden that we keep unfrozen so they can take a bath, something that is essential to their survival in winter.  The sun is about to set, exhausted after a five hour stint and I have lit a lot of candles.  I sit with my computer in my lap, one dog to my side and the other warming my legs, my husband in his easy chair reading.  I have a cup of coffee and some cookies and a stack of magazines that I didn't have time to read on my last business trip.  Perfect!  And of course this is the point.  To enjoy life.

Oh, and the soap!  But of course peppermint EO and crushed candy canes on a milk soap with a teaspoon of TD.  I just had to do it.  Christmas has to be full of clichés and a little bit corny.
.
.

Lemongrass and madder - Unexpected combo

Those Russian ladies are always cute. I have no idea where
I got them.  Is that weird? The braiding I got in my favorite
flea market The Good Shepherd for about 4 dollars. I used
some of it on my little daybed that I recovered. That post
is still a draft :)

Trying to match fragrance to colour is a challenge, especially when one is committed to using natural colours only.  This combo may or may not be repeated.

I used Madder root for this soap and this time I used a bit more than I have done previously.  The colour is more of a tan than the warm red that I was hoping for, but that may suit the scent better.  Although somehow I guess Lemongrass should be either yellow or slightly green. Which reminds me, I need to try dried Parsley soon!

But I love Lemongrass scent, it lasts so much better than lemon.  The soap smells lovely and I used dried bits of Lemongrass on top.  Tha may not be such a good idea because it was a bitch to cut.

This recipe was the same as the one I used for the Palmarosa soap apart from the colouring material and the scent.  I think I need to wait to use the soap before I decide what I think about it.  I may learn to like it yet.
.

Milkmint - A milky white and minty soap

One of my friends is and artist and I just love the colours
she uses. I don't wear much lace, but have a hard time
resisting buying it and this scarf made it home with me.

I am so proud of this one.  I think I wrote somewhere rather nonchalantly that some soapmakers try to get their milk soaps very white.  My attitude was rather like: "As if that matters".  But I had to try.  But midway through the experiment I decided to cheat and put a little bit of Titanium dioxide in there.  I didn't quite trust the soap that I painstakingly made to be as white as I wanted.  But I am pretty sure that I wouldn't have gotten it this white if the bases hadn't been very white...Or would I?  Well I'll never know.  But I don't care.  I think this is my all time favorite soap.  At least right now.  I tend to love best the latest soaps.

I had read somewhere, probably in the book I have about making milk soaps, that the trick is to dissolve the lye very, very slowly in the frozen milk and not let the soap heat up too much.  So I did that.  I half froze the milk and put a bit of the lye into it and stirred until the milk was almost completely thawed and then I put it back in the freezer.  I waited for it to freeze again and then I put a bit of the lye into it ...  Repeated this many, many times until all the lye was dissolved.  Obviously the last time the lye/milk solution should be at about room temperature and so should the oils.  I combined the two and the soap came together perfectly.  I added some TD and Peppermint EO.

I got the brilliant idea to crumble some dried mint on top.  I had the last mint of the summer that had gone to flower and I had dried that even if they say that it should be picked before flowering.  I think it's my German genes that make me ignore advise like that.  So I put it on top of the soap.  It was so pretty.  But I made one mistake.  I put the soap in the freezer and I think that resulted in the pretty green and purple herbs on top turning brown.  OR, it could have been that I wrapped it too soon.  Oh, I could have cried!  But not for long.  Chuck it up to experience.  I'm going to make that again and this time not put it in the freezer and absolutely not wrap it too soon.  But the smell is lovely.  I really like peppermint essential oil.  It is nothing like artificial scent.  Just pure and fresh.
.

My gift to myself - Madder root and Neroli soap

That lovely little tablecloth I bought in Slovakia. The
little lantern is from the Good S as is the glass bowl.  What
a fantastic shape.

I love making new recipes for soaps.  Mostly because I get new ideas, but sometimes I just don't have the ingredients that I need, so I improvise.  I try to use all my soaps to see how I like them and I really use them for a while to get a strong feeling for my preference.  I recently have been reaching for the same one, and realized that I really liked the way it lathers andfeels on the skin.  So I decided to make that recipe again, just for me with my absolute favorite fragrance, Neroli.

I also welcomed the opportunity to use Madder root again.  I really loved the colour I obtained last time, but it did fade to very, very light pink.  I therefore used about twice the amount as before.  But this is a facination of natural colours.  They reward me by being different every single time and I never get bored.  This time I got a very lovely peach colour.  A little bit more delicate than I intended, but who am I to argue with nature?

The recipe I used was a bit different from the one I intended to recreate because I didn't have enough Almond oil, so I improvised.  It will be interesting to see if I like the soap as much as the other.

Madder root and neroli soap.
This recipe is for 700g

25%     Coconut oil            175 g / 6 oz
25%     Lard                       175 g / 6 oz
20%     Grapeseed oil         135 g / 4.7 oz
17%     Apricot kernel oil   118 g / 4.1 oz
7%       Almond oil               50g / 1.7 oz
6%       Soybean oil              45g / 1.5 oz

I put about 2-3 tbsp of Madder root into the lye water and let it sit until cool enough to use it in the soap. The soap turned a nice pink which I felt was quite blue pink tobegin with, but it rapidly changed to a much warmer pink, ending in peach.  The scent I used was mostly Neroli, but I added some frangipani that I had left over and some ylang ylang as well.  It smelled wonderful and I do hope it stays.  I put the soap in the fridge to prevent trace in the hope that it would also result in the fragrance holding.

The smell of lye is gone now and it seems that the scent comes through in a nice and gentle way.  That is the way I like it, so perfect for my birthday present which is in a few weeks.  I look forward to it.  I know I'll get a great  present!
.

Orange dog soap

The old books were used as props for the wedding. They were
stacked here and there in the house. We got them for free at the
Good S. Those fall colours we had this year were fantastic.

I thought I would do an orange soap to keep Jennifer at Jenora soaps company. One of the reasons is that I saw unrefined Palm oil in an asian food store the other day and I just had to have it. I have never used Palm oil because it isn't sold here. I know that there is a lot of controversy surrounding Palm oil and I respect that. But I wouldn't be human if I didn't succumb to trying out a new oil!

I decided for some reason that this would be a good dog soap and that it should go into a tube. I had intended to cut it into long half rounds since I thought that would be a good shape to fit nicely into the palm as I wash the dogs. I did cut a few that way, but some I cut smaller. I have no idea why, but ever since I have been thinking of trying to do a landscape, using this as a setting sun. That would be very patriotic.

The soap is without scent, but with some herbal oils because Bichons have a tendency to have skin problems and I thought it would be nice for my bitches to have nice skin conditioning ingredients.

Recipe:

Coconut oil               25% 125 g / 4.4 oz
Palm oil                     25% 125 g / 4.4 oz
Olive oil                    25% 125 g / 4.4 oz
Soybean oil               20% 100 g / 3.5 oz
Castor oil                     5%   25 g / 3.5 oz

Water                        38%  190g / 6.8 oz
Lye                                       71g / 2.5 oz

In addition to this I added 1 tsp. of Comfrey infused oil and 1 tsp. of Yarrow infused oil, both infused in olive oil. So the SF is a bit more than the 5% that the recipe reports.

But the soap traced very, very fast and I had quite a time getting it into the tube. I was therefore a bit surprised that the soap was quite soft when I took it out of the mould. The colour is a very strong orange-yellow. It is a little bit too saturated for my taste.  The colour is not dissimilar to the Sea Buckthorn soaps that I did some time ago but it is more orange, so not a bad try for an orange soap.  But maybe I'll try to use more socially acceptable colourants next time.
.

And my Very Green Soap

That metal circle will be a great frame for a wedding picture
of the kids. I have just the right photo for it but need to
 photoshop it to fit. I also dried some of my Hollyhock.

I actually intended to try to make another blue soap with indigo be cause the first one was a total failure.  I had put the indigo powder into oils and it did not give any colour.  So I figured that I should put it into the water, so I tried that.  Well, that sure didn't work either so I changed direction and reached for my dried herbs in the hope that I would be able to make green soap.

I chose Comfrey, since I have quite a bit of it already dried and still a lot left in the allotment garden.  I think maybe I read that Cocobong has used that and gotten a good green, but I'm not sure, it might have been nettle.  I know that I have read that Parsley is supposed to give a good green.  I tried to put that into oil.  Do not do that.  It's completely pointless.  So now I'm drying some and I will try to put that into the water for a soap sometime.

But back to Comfrey.  I have some of that in oil and also some that I simply dried.  Since the infused oil isn't particularly green I put some crushed dried leaves into the lye water and let it sit for a while and it did turn a bit green, but not a lot.  So I decided that I would leave the leaves in and attempt to make them smaller with the stick blender.  Which I did and it worked fine.  I don't usually like to leave flecks in the soap if I can help it, but if I hadn't there wouldn't have been much colour at all.

Since I had just bought some patchouli EO I decided to use that for the first  time along with some Bergamot and Lemongras EO's.  I have to admit that I wasn't sure what Patchouli was like because I have never had it.  It is very Hippy to me.  Reminiscent of the seventies.  Which is good.  A bit masculine also, and that is good since I haven't done a masculine fragrance in a long time.

I did a very simple soap.

Coconut oil 30%  150 g / 5.3 oz

Olive oil 40%       200 g / 7 oz
Soybean oil 25%  125 g/ 4.4 oz
Cocoa butter 6%    30 g / 1 oz

Water  38%          190g / 6.8 oz
Lye                        72g / 2.5 oz
5% SF.

So the soap wasn't particularly green at first, but when I cut it it was this beautiful grass green.  Alas, it has now turned olive green.  A nice olive, but that green was amazing.  How I miss it!  But these are perfect soaps to give as a gift to a few guys that I have been working with.  There are a few women in that group also, so I now am thinking up a recipe for a pink soap using my Rumex oil for the colour.
.

Calendula soap - Triple luxury

That improvised soap mold worked beautifully and I could
easily use it to practice swirls. The heart shaped evening bag
is pretty and the ornate hairband is a little over the top.

Now I know that it's fall again.  My cousin and I just started to make soaps together again after taking the summer off for the most part even though I have made a few soaps on my own.  I can't not do it.  I guess it's an obsession of sorts, or it's just too much fun to not do it.  And there always seem to be some really fund things to try out.

But our joint soap making sessions are ususally fun.  We always manage to agree on what to do and this time she wanted to make calendula soap with her homemade Calendula oil and my dried Calendula petals and her dried flowerheads.  We ended up making it in a tray mold that I had picked up at "The Good Shepherd" a thrift shop charity where I spend all my spare cash.  It isn't really a soap mold, that much I know, but I can't imagine what else it could be used for.  I frequently get asked by the staff at the till: "What is that you are buying?" and very often the answer is: "I have absolutely no idea".  I usually figure it out or find some use for the stuff myself at some point.  But back to soaps.

Very pretty and very nice soap for delicate skin.

We intended to make just one recipe and since we wanted it a bit yellow we used carrot juice and we also hoped that the infused Calendual oil would contribute a bit of colour.  But as it turned out we made a 3 layer soap because the mold required at least 3 pounds of soap and we just made a regular size batch the first time.  So we made the other two a bit different, just for fun.  We could have made swirls, but didn't since she wanted to put dried flowers on top and I have to admit that that looks very nice.

I was asked for cut pictures and here they are, the little hacked up darlings.  It did surprise me that the dried calendula petals came through with their colour so orange, but I don't know if that will last.  We used no fragrance.  Two reasons for that.  I placed an order from a UK company at the beginning of June and am still waiting for it!  This might turn into a separate post about fraud pretty soon.  I've called and emailed... But... later.  Anyway, in the absence of the EO's that we should have received a looong time ago we thought we would make this unscented and therefore suitable for people with allergies and sensitivity to fragrance.

The recipes are:

Layer 1:
Olive oil            56%        420 g / 14.8 oz
Coconut oil       28%        210 g / 7.4 oz
Cocoa butter       6.3%       70 g / 2.5 oz
Sunflower oil      5%          50 g / 1.8 oz (Calendula officinalis infused)

Carrot juice         38%       285g / 10 oz
Lye                                    103g / 3.6 oz
8% SF.

The infused oil was added at trace as well as a generous amount of dried Calendula petals.  This layer turned out to be a slightly yellowish tan colour.

The next layer is almost the same except we added unrefined palm oil which I found in an Asian store and couldn't resist trying even if there are all kinds of ethical issues.  So layer one has different percentages, but mostly the same numbers are layer 1.

Layer 2:
Olive oil                   52.5%      420 g / 14.8 oz

Coconut oil              26.3%      210 g / 7.4 oz

Cocoa butter               8.75%       70 g / 2.5 oz

Sunflower oil              6.25%       50 g / 1.8 oz (Calendula officinalis infused)

Unrefined Palm oil     6.25%       50 g / 1.8 oz 

Water        38%       304g / 10.7 oz

Lye                         109g / 3.9 oz

8% SF.

To this we also added dried calendula petals and the infused oil went in at trace.  This layer turned out a very pretty yellow.

The third layer was the same as the first except we used water instead of carrot juice.  That layer is quite white and is a perfect backdrop for the dried flower heads we pushed in on top for decoration.

Cutting the soap turned out to be a bit of a challenge.  I hadn't really thought about how I would do that since the mould is larger than any knife I have.  I guess I need to make a wire cutter if I use that mould again.  I had thought that we would end up with 3x4 soaps out of the mould, but when I had cut (hacked?) them up they were way too big so I cut them in half again.  And they look kind of cute, if a bit crooked.
.